![\"Pirate's](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/pirates-treasure-how-the-worlds-leading-torrent-site-pirate-bay-amassed-4-5-million-in-bitcoin-768x432.jpg\")
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The Pirate Bay has been the world\u2019s most popular torrent web portal for the last eighteen years. Despite a few hiccups during that time, the site remains accessible via mirrors and proxy websites. In addition to remaining online, Pirate Bay has been accepting bitcoin for donations since 2013 acquiring more than $4.5 million worth since then.<\/b><\/p>\nThe Pirate Bay\u2019s Bitcoin Stash<\/h2>\n
Since 2003, when it was founded by the Swedish think tank Piratbyr\u00e5n, the Pirate Bay has been the most popular, and perhaps the most beloved torrent website in the world. The web portal is basically an index of digital content hosted online so users can download, own, and seed the content via Bittorrent technology. <\/span><\/p>\n Of course, in 2009, the Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Fredrik Neij got into some trouble over copyright laws. While the founders dealt with prison sentences during that time, the Pirate Bay continued to operate and in 2013, the web portal <\/span>announced<\/span><\/a> it was accepting bitcoin donations.<\/span><\/p>\n In fact, the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin <\/span>wrote about it<\/span><\/a> during the week the Pirate Bay announced bitcoin support. Buterin discussed the acceptance when he was contributing articles to Bitcoin Magazine in April 2013. The ETH<\/a> cofounder noted at the time that the Pirate Bay raised over 10 BTC<\/a>, worth $1,300 that month in 2013, during the first day of donations. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOther major torrent sites have quickly started to do the same thing,\u201d Buterin said. \u201cEZTV, Openbittorrent, Publicbittorrent, and istole.it have all added bitcoin donation addresses onto their front pages,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/ins> <\/ins> <\/p>\n Of course, since then the Pirate Bay has changed its bitcoin (BTC<\/a>) donation address since then and at the end of 2019, <\/span>speculation was abound<\/span><\/a> concerning how much the site has accumulated over time.<\/span><\/p>\n The first BTC<\/a> address the Pirate Bay used was mentioned by Buterin in his article and that <\/span>empty address<\/span><\/a> once held 22.57 BTC<\/a>. In another publicly known <\/span>donation address<\/span><\/a> the Pirate Bay leveraged, the operation accumulated 13.37 BTC<\/a>. But the Pirate Bay also had another <\/span>BTC address<\/span><\/a> which gathered 76.80 BTC<\/a> in donations. In the Torrentfreak speculation article, the report adds up the daily income it made between accepting LTC<\/a> and BTC<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Torrentfreak\u2019s Ernesto Van der Sar added up all the funds received since 2013 and up until 2016, he <\/span>reported<\/span><\/a> that the Pirate Bay made a donation average of $9.34 per day. Fast forward to 2019 and the researchers disclosed that it had risen to <\/span>$13.16 per day<\/span><\/a> in BTC<\/a> and $0.40 per day in litecoin (LTC<\/a>). <\/span><\/p>\n![\"Pirate's](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/image1-2.jpeg\" "\\"Pirate's")
<\/p>\nAre Pirate Bay Founders Bitcoin Rich?<\/h2>\n
![\"Pirate's](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/shaggy_001-e1470300215194.jpg\" "\\"Pirate's")